"The Movie Room - An Ode to VHS"

Hi Everyone!!! This next piece is actually the resulting byproduct of my Flourish and Blotts piece. I discovered that the pieces cut from the window frame make good black ‘plastic’ VHS boxes when wrapped in a piece of black cardstock. So I started trying to see if I could find printable covers for them, and I went slip sliding away right down the rabbit hole until I had 75 of my most-watched movies of my younger years!

I thought about using them for a video rental store ala Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, but it just seemed too uninspired to me, wasn’t clicking. But, that was the level of nostalgia I wanted to capture. Thus was born the room that many of us will feel like we’ve been in before at some point in our lives. As it came together, I had the idea to build it in to a bigger replica of the TV I made for inside of it, and I built a rocking mechanism so the knob on the front of the TV is the on/off switch for the lights. There’s a dingy ceiling light and a blue light inside the TV (which is actually wired through the ‘outlet’ on the wall, like a real power cord).

Left Wall Videos: Akira, Barb Wire, Batman, Blade, Bladerunner, The Breakfast Club, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Karate Kid II, Keeping the Faith, Practical Magic, The Princes Bride, The Lost Boys

Back Wall Videos: Cocktail, The Craft, Crossroads, Daria, Demolition Man, Dragonheart, Empire Strikes Back, First Knight, The First Wives Club, Flashdance, Footloose, Ghost, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Matrix, Princess Mononoke, Roadhouse, Robin Hood, Return of the Jedi, Serendipity, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Short Circuit, Stargate, Star Trek The Motion Picture, Star Wars

Right Wall Videos: G.I. Joe (animated movie), Grumpy Old Men, Hocus Pocus, Independence Day, Interview with the Vampire, Invader Zim, Top Gun, Van Helsing, West Side Story, Wizard of Oz, Xanadu, You’ve Got Mail

Floor Stacks: Police Academy, Escape From New York, Gremlins, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, *Batteries Not Included, Flight of the Navigator, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Rocketeer, The Neverending Story, E.T., Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Willow, Wizards, Moulin Rouge, Grease, Tomb Raider, Spaceballs, Jurassic Park, Sister Act, Tommy, Tron, Ghostbusters, Dick Tracey, Romeo and Juliet, Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, and Dirty Dancing.

Indian Jones and the Last Crusade is open on top of the VCR with the tape partly in the machine. It is slightly under appreciated though, that’s a special case I made out of cardstock specifically to open and hold a draftboard VHS tape. Though I didn’t know how I’d be using it at this point yet…

The rocker plate attached to the knob on the front. I had to build a cradle to hold the switch and a flat paddle flips the switch back and forth. I made a piece too wide and had to snip it shorter, hence the damage…but aren’t we all a little damaged on the inside? :slight_smile:

And the back battery panel. By the time I reach this part, I’m usually DONE and not really wanting to do a latch-type closure for a battery panel, but this one I figured out how to use the battery’s own weight to keep it closed, this only falls out if I tilt it backwards more than 90 degrees or upside down.
Screenshot 2023-02-16 235834

BUT, my favorite, most tiny little detail of the whole thing, is the prescription bottle in the side table drawer. I cannot take credit for the name, I saw this label while I was searching for examples and decided I absolutely had to get this in here for the mood, even if it was practically 2pt font.

Used the forge to engrave/cut the VHS boxes, TV, VCR face, TV Stand, plant stand, and housing face/knobs/switch cradle from medium PG draftboard, and the small TV screen from medium clear acrylic. The rest is all cardstock, chipboard, wire, hot glue, paper towels, etc. Overall measurements 9.5" x 6.5"x4.5"

Thank you for stopping and taking a look, I hope you’ve enjoyed taking this journey as much as I did, and until next creation, Happy Forging!

67 Likes

Wow, so much detail and so many techniques used to make everything!

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Wow. You have really invoked an era with that one. Very well done!

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Thanks for sharing the fun and your hard work.

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This is amazing

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Thank you again for sharing your vision and techniques. There is so much to see in this project.

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Great job as usual, one might call it a … Blockbuster :rofl:

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So much detail! I will have to look at this for hours to catch everything!

So amazing! Thank you so much for sharing your creations with us!

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The TV is sure clicking now. `An amazing piece!

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Astounding as always. There’s a VR horror game called Duck Season that has a similar aesthetic. I’m getting a bit of a creepy vibe after spending hours immersed in that game and expecting… surprises.

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This one is utterly amazing, as is your taste in movies.

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Absolutely amazing!

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@shogun and I went to a media store last weekend that sold LPs, cassettes, 8-tracks… and VHS. [1]

It was pretty crazy to see so many tapes in one place again.

If you’re in the Atlanta area and are curious:


  1. and CDs and comics and old school console cartridges and laserdiscs etc. it’s pretty cool. ↩︎

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It was quite awesome!

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Hitting another one out of the park! I also love the detail of the cord (tripping hazard) going right through the middle. Oh the memories that brings back! Ow.

are those Lay’s potato chips on the chair?

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Sure are!

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Amazing detail. Makes a person want to look hard at everything.
I think I could use a prescription like that :rofl:

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You never cease to amaze.

Thank you for sharing!

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We have a place like that. I used to work there years ago (40 years ago…wow!) When I was there, we only had Vinyl, Cassettes, 8-tracks, and we had just started with those newfangled CD things.

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My favorite detail is that most famous of National Geographic cover images.

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